When you first are about to finish your masters program, the one that will lay the foundation for you to practice counseling, or therapy, I think there is a tendency to think that you can help everyone and anyone. There is, naturally, a combination of enthusiasm, hope, naivete, and maybe even confidence that conspire to support this illusion. I was fortunate enough at that time to have a supervisor who told me straight out that that would not be the case. Even so, it took some years of experience in the trenches, and of personal development, for me to understand really what he meant. I think I have a pretty good idea now.
One hopefully learns more about one's own limitations, one's real skills, one's personal preferences and needs; about the real nature of a variety of dysfunctional behaviors and conditions, about the importance of client motivation in making any meaningful changes at all - and let's remember always, that psychotherapy is about making meaningful changes, and not about maintaining a status quo.
My professional experience suggests that making changes isn't something that most people look forward to, or embrace enthusiastically, or even understand the need for. If I could tell clients that I could and would help them to remain exactly the same as they are, and still experience whatever benefits they think they're after, I'd have the busiest practice on the planet. A waiting list years long. People ready and willing to pay any fee I cared to charge. You see the point.
Of course (I say "of course", but I don't actually believe it's obvious, or readily understandable), this is never the case. I underline "never". So the older I get,
and the more experience I have, the more I sometimes feel that I perhaps ought to publish a list of criteria, of pre-requisites, or qualities that my ideal client will be able to meet, or will possess. This will avoid encouraging people who really don't want to make any personal changes, people who want someone else to change but not themselves, people who seemingly lack even the most basic insights or understandings about themselves or about their circumstances, from looking to therapy for help. Why encourage what is extremely unlikely? Why offer promise where there is virtually none?
So here's a list; a work in progress. I'm writing this as much to see what I'll come up with as to be of service to others. I admit my selfishness and my simple curiosity. Here goes:
A certain degree of humilty
A certain degree of willingness to explore
A certain curiosity about oneself, about people, about life
A certain recognition, even if vague, of the possibility of healing
Something less than a phobic avoidance of the likelihood of having to change
An ability to see oneself, even if only partially, as no better than anyone else
A certain awareness, perhaps, of the essential structural reality of relationship
A value system that includes concern for people beyond oneself and beyond one's
narrow circle
Ideally, at least a sense of the possibility of a Reality, a Truth, a Meaning, beyond one's small self serving agenda in life
At least a budding awareness of the importance of including one's feelings in one's life, as well as one's ideas
Some degree of capacity for and disposition toward the truth
This is enough for a start, I think. And of course, this is only my bias. Give me a call if you can relate.
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